A few years ago, when the focus shifted from Baskin & Robbins and Ben & Jerry’s Belgian dark chocolate ice cream (a direct spillover of Bollywood pop culture generally, and particularly, an emulation of a heavily pregnant Preity Zinta’s cravings that arose 15 minutes before midnight in the 2005 release, Salaam Namaste) we started looking at gelatos. But the classic Italian frozen dessert actually dates back to the Renaissance period, when a man named Bernardo Buontalenti invented it for a grand banquet that was being hosted by Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici in Tuscany. Or so the story goes.

Things are different today, with the sweet treat being preferred over regular ice cream because of a variety of reasons, ranging from a lesser percentage of fat, to a creamier texture, and the availability of eclectic flavours like stracciatella, notably the most popular variant which is typified by the irregular chocolate shavings that it comes with.